If you’ve been looking forward to new hardware from Nokia and/or Windows Phone 8, than today is a big day for you. Nokia has a press event in NYC that is starting any minute now and Geek.com is tuned in. We’ll follow the event and drop in some coverage of the Lumia 920, Windows Phone 8, and anything else exciting that might happen.

Nokia is streaming the eventbut they seem to be having some considerable technical difficultiesUpdate: The stream is working now. It’s not working for us right now (and everyone pounding F5 probably isn’t helping). Mashable, The Verge, and other sites are live blogging the event if you want to follow that way.

Right now Stephen Elop talk is going through how great Nokia is doing, how they are limiting data consumption for use in less developed countries, and so forth. It’s basically fluff for starting off the talk, but we’re getting some insight into different parts of Nokia’s business, like their large mapping side and Asha.

And now it’s Jo Harlow to talk about the “next steps” for Nokia. What’s that? It appears to be some sort of Lumia-like handset… Yes, it’s the “Windows Phone 8 flagship” Lumia 920.

What makes it the flagship? Built-in wireless charging and a Pureview camera with Carl Zeiss lens for top-notch images and video. It’ll come in black, yellow, and white, and have a 2000mAh battery.

What makes the camera so good? The PureView camera is said to capture 5-10x the light of a typical smartphone camera. There is a floating lens that can stay open longer without shake, which means more light without a flash. Nokia is pushing the limit of image stabilization and “surpassing” many DSLRs in this respect.

Other features include Nokia services and perks, like offline maps, Nokia Drive voice-guided navigation, indoor maps, Nokia City Lens AR information service (example: point the camera at a restaurant and it’ll give you information about it).

So a great camera, great location services… what else? There is the PureMotion HD+ display. That means better-than-HD resolution and a high refresh rate. That display, by the way, is a 4.5-inch curved glass one that works well outdoors, even in sunlight thanks to Nokia’s ClearBlack polarized displays…. which were improved for the Nokia 920.

The battery is 2000mAh, the largest Nokia has ever used in a phone. It works with the Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor for its efficiency and power.

There is also wireless charging with the “fatboy recharge pillow” and other wireless charging devices. The handset uses the Qi wireless charging standard. After today Qi wireless charging plates will make their way to the Virgin Atlantic clubhouse in Heathrow Airport (what??) and Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf shops. Nokia is working on other partnerships like this and wants to “turboboost” Qi wireless charging adoption.

Now Joe Belfiore from Microsoft is up and it’s time to talk about Windows Phone 8. He is going to talk over some details but it will largely be a recap of what we already know about Windows Phone 8 (the mobile OS will have its own launch event).

Right now JB is customizing his phone. He’s adding a games tile and a “Me” area. He’s doing a lot of “scooching” and resizing of both tiles and hubs. Long story short: with Windows Phone 8 you can personalize your homescreen and start experience.

Belfiore is still talking about customizing tiles, the People hub, and an “extra large” CNN tile. He’s seems to be on Windows Phone-explainer-autopilot.

Windows Phone 8 will have a built-in screenshot function, which is cool. Here is the first ever public screenshot of Windows Phone 8, via Belfiore on Twitter. The resolution is 768×1280.

The camera will not support pinch zoom, so that will be used instead of a zoom bar. Other photo features are integration with Microsoft Photosynth and then different “lens” which can be built for Windows Phone 8, like FX Suite.

Another photo app is “Blink” by MS Research. It take a bunch of pictures in order to find the best shot of a person’s face.

Now it’s time for Nokia VP Kevin Shields, who will talk about the Lumia 920.

He’s talking about the handset’s phone and style. It’s available in lipstick red, yellow, and a dark grey/black color.

The construction is better then the 900 and the display is stronger as well. There is no camera bump, and the side keys and camera details are all ceramic.

Other innovations he wants to highlight: the display, the camera, and wireless charging.

The display is very fast, very bright, and works with gloves on!

The Nokia wireless charging plate is designed to make charging simple and to keep your battery full. There are accessories like the JBL PowerOff speakers, which wirelessly charge and communicate with the phone using NFC.

Nokia Music is coming to the US today (as was announced yesterday). It’ll be in the Windows Phone market.

Another integrated experience is Angry Birds Roost — which brings news, videos, ringtones, and wallpapers from Rovio. You can also, of course, buy the Angry Birds games through the app. Last up will be two lenses: Object Remover (smart moving object removal from images) and Cinemagraph.

Now it’s time for more talk about the camera. How do get better shots? More light. How to get more light? A larger aperture (the Lumia 920 is f/2.0) and longer shots. But longer shots means shake. You fight shake with image stabilization, which the Lumia 920 has in spades. The IS uses a floating lens elements (on springs), which isolate the camera from the rest of the handset.

And now… the Nokia Lumia 820. Same polycarbonate unibody, 4.3-inch display, same touch dislay, NFC, Nokia location services, Nokia music, and all the 920s apps. One innovation the 820 has that the 920 doesn’t: the exterior shell is removable. So you can choose from red, black, purple, cyan, and so on. One set of these shells offers wireless charging.

It’s 11:12 and Stephen Elop is back on stage to introduce the one and only Steve Ballmer. He’s doing some Windows Phone cheerleading and talking about the progress Nokia has made over the past few months (since the MS partnership began).

Ballmer is talking about very high level stuff about Windows 8, Windows Phone 8, Windows tablets, getting developers for these platforms, and so on. He bests the next app developer to “hit it really, really big” will be on Windows.

Ballmer has left the stage, and Elop is wrapping up. Just a reminder: we haven’t gotten any information on release date, distribution, or prices.

That’s about it for our coverage. We should have hands-on coverage before long as well as further coverage of what was announced today.

Reader Comments

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Apologies if you checked this page and it was, erm, blank during the announcement. The cache didn’t refresh in a timely manner, but we caught it and fixed it asap. Hopefully no one missed much (or you switched over to the livestream before long).